Honeymoon with Death

by Vivian Conroy

  “You could have remembered I’d need a translator and brought him to my room in person.’

  “I could have, but my first responsibility lies with my patient. I was just trying to cheer her up a bit. This whole affair is a terrible burden on her.”

  “The doctor told me something about her mother’s death. The old woman who was recently murdered asked him to look closely at the body. The body of her mistress as he put it, so now we know for sure that Eureka worked at the villa at the time of the murder. She washed the corpse and dressed it for burial. She must have felt something was off to ask for the doctor to have a look.”

  “Yes, yes, and what did he find?” Mrs Valentine asked impatiently.

  “The doctor found something in the stab wound which killed her that suggested that it was inflicted with a blade which wasn’t clean. I wonder what the substance on the blade can have been.”

  Mrs Valentine clapped her hands together. “Cork! I read somewhere that a sharp blade is protected by putting a bit of cork on the sharp tip.”

  “Yes, I also thought it must mean the blade had been carried in something and then extracted and used.”

  Mrs Valentine frowned. “You mean that the killer held something out to her and then suddenly extracted the knife from it and stabbed her when she didn’t expect it? It could have been anything. A book?”

  “Achilles Kyrioudis,” Jasper said slowly. “And the knife carried in the spine of a book? A mythology book to show her?” He looked at Mrs Valentine. “Hiding the knife makes a lot of sense you know, considering the killer also had to remove himself from the scene with the weapon without anyone noticing anything odd. Then Arthur Reynolds came upon the dead body, leaned over to check on her and paid for it with his life.”

  “So we need to picture a killer who cold-bloodedly stabbed a woman and then walked off with the bloody knife hidden in the item he had brought it in, and leaving her dead or dying on the tiles?”

  Jasper nodded. “Something like that. It’s too bad it’s so long ago. I would love to know who was there that afternoon.”

  “Maybe Eureka knew? Maybe she had an idea right away who the killer could be? Maybe she encouraged the doctor to look at the body to have him prove her suspicions?”

  “Yes, but he could prove nothing and there was no real investigation. And Eureka never told her story, for all of those years. That is strange.’

  “She had nothing solid to base her story on. She didn’t want to go up against powerful men like Kyrioudis or his police chief brother.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Mrs Valentine stared into the distance. “The doctor must have thought it so odd that he remembered. After all those years… I don’t suppose he kept records of it and could just look it up. Or he did. You never know. Some people are meticulous and take everything down. Or they have someone take it down for them. An assistant. A secretary. I don’t know how it is with these country doctors. But in the city they all have secretaries. These terribly efficient-looking girls who rattle on typewriters behind desks. You hardly ever notice them when you’re there. All attention goes to the doctors with their weighty-looking faces and their Latin names for diseases you’ve never heard of.”

  Jasper looked at her. “What was that?” he asked.

  She started. “I was just, oh … I was rambling, I suppose.”

  “No, no, you said something about not noticing someone.”

  Mrs Valentine stared in surprise at Jasper’s suddenly excited features. “I said you never notice those girls who do the paperwork. At doctor’s offices. They are there but you don’t see them. Like good butlers, they sort of blend in with their surroundings.”

  “But they do have access to everything.” Jasper stared into the distance again, as if he was looking at a grand perspective. “Everything from the present and the past. It would be… But can it be? Does it work with the times? The ages?”

  He suddenly grabbed her hand and shook it. “Thank you very much. I must go to the mainland right away. Look after Mrs Ramsforth. Even closer than you did before. I’m afraid she may still be in danger.”

  Before she could ask questions he had already rushed inside. Mrs Valentine followed two paces behind Jasper to see where he was going. Into his room. Perhaps he needed things he had there to take along to the mainland and get the answers he needed to questions he had suddenly thought of? She had no idea how her remark could have possibly sparked anything intriguing.

  She turned back to stand and watch Mrs Ramsforth complete her evening walk. The exercise would…

  Mrs Valentine’s heart skipped a beat as she looked down the path. It was deserted.

  Where was Mrs Ramsforth?

  A moment ago she had still been walking there, stopping every now and then to look at the flowers and the butterflies. Or to listen to the crickets, perhaps, who were already starting their evening concerto.

  But now she was gone.

  Oh, no!

  Mrs Valentine broke into a run down the path.

  * * *

  Gideon Hawtree tried to suppress the urge to grab Damaris Ramsforth by the shoulders and shake her to impress the urgency of his request upon her. He didn’t have much time and it was essential she understood. But instead he just stood before her, blocking her way back onto the path she had come from when he had called her name. He held her gaze and said, “I hope you’re well. I can’t tell you how sorry we both are, Robin and I, that this happened. Your honeymoon here should have been…”

  She held up a hand to cut him off. “No need to feel sorry for me. I’ve now discovered, in time, that my husband doesn’t love me. It’s a hard lesson, but one that will serve me well. I have independent means, I need not stay married to him.”

  The earth shook under Gideon’s feet. She’d divorce Ramsforth and take the money with her. Out of his reach. His invention wouldn’t become a reality. Everything he had dreamt of would fall to dust. She couldn’t do that.

  He said, “I’m certain you’re mistaken. Teddy loves you dearly. He came to us right after he had met you and he talked about you all night. This wonderful girl he had met and how it had changed everything. I’m sure he loves you.”

  He wished Robin was here to help him with this. She was much better at the whole emotional thing. All that beat through his brain was: Make sure you get the money, make sure you get the money. You’ve already gone too far to turn back now.

  Damaris said, “I don’t know if he was ever in love with me. Or if he just faked that to make it look good. But now that I know I have money and that he might have known about that too…”

  “How? He had never met you before! He knew nothing about you. And the money comes from a family you didn’t even know you were related to. You knew nothing about your past. How could he have known it?”

  Gideon felt sweat trickle down his back. This was the most important thing he had ever done in his life. He had to make it work.

  He continued, “Teddy couldn’t have known it. Don’t blame him for what happened here. He just wanted to make you happy. This place, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? You would have been happy here.”

  “But I know everything now and I can’t be happy here. My mother died here. My father abandoned me.”

  “But that wasn’t Teddy’s fault. He never had anything to do with it.” Gideon grabbed her arm. “Please, Damaris. Don’t ruin his life because you are upset now. You will see, in due time, that it wasn’t Teddy’s fault. He only meant to make you happy. And the money he will borrow from you he will pay you back. It’s not like he’s profiting from you. He just wants to make this dream of his a reality. With me. We have a foolproof plan. Your investment is safe with us. Trust me.”

  Damaris tried to wrench her arm away from his grasp. “Did Teddy put you up to this? Because he thinks I won’t listen to him but I will listen to you?”

  Gideon increased the pressure. “You should listen. He wants the best for you. I can’t say that of those other people you’
ve fallen in with. Do you have any idea what they want? They are watching over you, they say, but do they? Those powders they give you to sleep, maybe they’re making you feel ill and miserable. Maybe they’re turning you against Teddy. You can’t trust them. They are strangers.”

  Damaris stared into his eyes. She was no longer struggling.

  He continued in a rush, “This former inspector had a retired nurse come. She knows everything about powders and pills and tricks of the mind. She’s keeping you under a drug-induced haze of sadness. How do you think it’s possible you suddenly remember the past? You’re not remembering the past at all. It’s things they plant into your head with their pills.”

  He of all people knew that. The psychiatrist who had treated him after Hector’s death had given him pills. And talks, endless talks. To plant the idea into his head that he was responsible. To blame. So they could shove him out of their lives. The child they had never really wanted. They had already stopped loving him when Hector had come along. They were to blame. It was their fault. Not his.

  “They’re manipulating you,” he whispered hoarsely. “They don’t care for you, just for the game they’re playing with you. Their game, their rules. Don’t fall for it. Make up your own mind. You know the truth. Teddy does love you, he always has.”

  Damaris stared at him, despair in her eyes. He bet she wanted to believe this; oh, he had wanted to believe it. That his parents loved him despite the baby brother born. Flesh of their flesh, blood of their blood. He had wanted to believe it, he had repeated it to himself over and over. They do love you, they do.

  He had so wanted to believe it and he knew that Damaris also wanted to believe it. She might say she had means now and didn’t need Teddy but she did need him. She couldn’t hug her money, that fortune wouldn’t wrap an arm around her at night. She needed a man of flesh and blood to be with.

  Gideon said softly, “Don’t throw everything you’ve found away, Damaris. You will be sorry later. You’re upset now and angry and you need someone to blame. But Teddy didn’t do anything. He loves you. He is desperate at the idea of losing you.”

  “Really? But I haven’t seen him at all. I feel like he’s avoiding me. Because he despises me now. He thinks I’m insane.”

  “Not at all. But the others are keeping him away from you. They told him you don’t want to see him. They told you he doesn’t want to see you. They’re driving a wedge between you, don’t you see? You have to fight them. You have to do something to save your happiness, your marriage.”

  “Ah, there you are.” A prim and proper woman sailed down on them, giving him a sharp look down her long nose. “Mrs Ramsforth, we’d better go back to the hotel. It’s getting chilly.”

  Gideon let go of Damaris, but held her gaze. “It’s up to you,” he said. “You can save everything.”

  She gave him a helpless frightened look, but the woman had already caught her elbow and swept her away. Gideon stared after the duo. He could only hope he had put enough doubts in her mind to make her start questioning the former inspector and the retired nurse. To make her start wondering if Teddy loved her after all and they could be together again.

  She still wanted him to love her, that much was clear.

  Gideon turned away. The tightness in his stomach wasn’t gone and it wouldn’t dissolve until he knew that the money for his invention was safe. But he had done all he could for the moment. He had to rely on the workings of the human mind to do the rest. A little seed of doubt planted while she was vulnerable.

  Oh, he had learned a lot from his little visits to the psychiatrist.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Jasper came back to the hotel the next morning, Mrs Valentine was already waiting for him. She nervously wrung her hands as she whispered, “Mrs Ramsforth has changed completely. She didn’t want to take her sleeping powder and she didn’t want me to sit by her bed or at her breakfast table.”

  “Why?” Jasper asked in bewilderment.

  “Last night, during her evening walk, she met someone. A man. He spoke with her briefly before I could catch up with them.” Mrs Valentine hung her head. “I’m sorry about that. I should have paid more attention.”

  “And after meeting that man she was different?” Jasper frowned hard. Had it been Dupin? Teddy Ramsforth had been adamant his wife had an affair going on with the charismatic painter. That the two of them had already known each other before meeting on the island. Could it be that Damaris Ramsforth wasn’t the innocent pawn in this game but she was also playing, with Dupin as her secret aide, the man in the shadows?

  Did the news that she had met with a man last night change the idea about the case he had built in his mind, based on all he knew now?

  Could he be wrong? At least partially wrong? Had Damaris Ramsforth come here on purpose? Had she only pretended she didn’t remember having lived here?

  He rubbed his forehead a moment. “Where is Mrs Ramsforth now?”

  “In the suite she shared with Mr Ramsforth. She wanted to get some things she needed.”

  Jasper walked quickly through the walled garden. The suite’s door was ajar. He had an unpleasant sense of foreboding as he put his hand against the wood to push it open. Part of him expected to see Damaris Ramsforth dead on the floor, blood flowing from a stab wound to her chest.

  But as the door opened, noiselessly, he saw her going through a suitcase. Not her own, but her husband’s.

  “Looking for something?” he asked.

  She started and jumped back. The suitcase slipped towards her and its contents tumbled out across her feet. She just caught the case so it didn’t fall to the floor. She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse. “Did you have to scare me like that?”

  “I thought we had an understanding that you would do as you were told. For your own protection.’

  “I know nothing. I can do nothing. I’m asked to sit here all day long until I think I’m going mad. Is that what you want? That I go insane? Is that what all of you want? Are you all in on it together?” Her voice rose with every new sentence.

  Jasper looked her over. Mrs Valentine had said she had refused any kind of pill or powder, or he’d think she was under the influence of something that drove her to extremes.

  “I’ve been away overnight to look into the case of your mother’s death. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Help me? By telling me my husband only came after me for money? By telling me my mother was murdered and the man who was driven into the sea for it probably not even guilty? By letting me sit here, day in, day out, remembering things about which I am not even sure if they are memories, or my own fabrications? I have to do something. I need to find out” – she gestured at the suitcase – “if Teddy ever loved me. If he lured me here on purpose. I don’t know. I don’t understand but I want to. I need to. I love him!”

  She gasped for breath. “Do you understand, Inspector? I love him. I’ve never loved anyone before like I love him. I need to know what the truth is.”

  “And you expect to find something in that case? Something incriminating? Would he bring it, for you to find?”

  “I don’t know.” She lowered her hands to her side and stared into the distance. “I don’t know.”

  Jasper walked over and squeezed her shoulder. “You must be strong now. Today we will have all the answers.”

  She looked up at him. “Today? How come?”

  “I just told you I was away overnight looking into your mother’s death. I think I now know what happened twenty-five years ago. And what happened when the old woman died on the beach.”

  Did he just imagine it or was there a flash of apprehension in her eyes? A moment’s terrified, “Oh, no, he can’t know.”

  But she wanted to know the truth. She had just said so.

  He turned away from her and said, “I’ve invited some people to come to the hotel. I’ll now ask the staff to prepare the dining room for us. There I will reveal it all.”

  He looked b
ack at her. She stood staring at him as if she didn’t quite know whether to believe him or not. Her face was young, vulnerable, but her eyes watchful and alert. Her posture reminded him of a deer catching movement in the undergrowth and watching for a moment, stiff with tension, before bounding away, fleeing for its life.

  Was it just the uncertainty of what he would reveal as all were gathered in the dining room? Fear that it might be more painful than she could fathom now?

  Or was it more?

  Was she not just worried for her marriage and the things she’d hear about her deceased mother, but also for herself?

  Jasper clenched his jaw and walked into the bright sunshine outside. He let it warm his face a moment before he continued into the dim lobby. It was a dark tale he was about to lay out. And he wasn’t quite sure himself how devastating the darkness would prove to be.

  * * *

  Teddy Ramsforth sat uneasily at one of the tables in the dining room. The layout had been changed slightly from what it had been before, giving Jasper a table in the centre of the room, with all of them seated at tables around him.

  Damaris was at a table with her nurse. At the next table was the wife of the obscure English couple who had taken care of Damaris, with the hotel receptionist, Medea.

  At the next table Robin leaned her chin in an elegant palm, avoiding looking his way. Better too with her husband by her side. Gideon leaned back in his chair, nothing in his marble features betraying anything about his feelings at this sudden gathering.

  On the table beside Teddy were two men who spoke Greek to each other. He thought he had seen one of them at the hotel before, talking with Jasper, but the other was new to him. They did look alike so they were probably related.

  And even further down the line of tables was the man Teddy had wanted to punch but who had almost broken his jaw in return. Dupin the painter.

  Teddy tried to catch any significant looks between Damaris and Dupin but there didn’t seem to be any. He couldn’t be wrong, though. That man had been up to something coming to their suite. And the painting he had made in the harbour… It just made Teddy’s blood boil to think another man had been leering at his wife, especially while they were on their honeymoon. But he wasn’t idiot enough to confront him right now. There’d be time after this gathering.